the Common Denominator
by DramaLexy
Summary: (alternate title: Kara and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day) Set after "33" and before "Water." Lee and Adama are still working on their relationship, but there's one person that they'll both do anything for.


TITLE: THE COMMON DENOMINATOR (a.k.a. Kara and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day)

AUTHOR: DramaLexy

DISCLAIMER: I'm just borrowing them. I'll put them back when I'm done, honest.

SUMMARY: Set after "33" and before "Water." Lee and Adama are still working on their relationship, but there's one person they'll both do anything for.

DISTRIBUTION: If you want it, sure, just let me know where.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: So I finally saw the miniseries this week, and between that and the fact that Wednesday was my birthday, I was inspired to do this little fic. Hope you enjoy; as always, comments are much appreciated.

* * *

Kara Thrace opened her eyes and looked around. She could hear some of the pilots that she shared a bunk room with moving around, heading to the bathroom to take a shower and getting dressed for their shifts. That was unusual; Kara was usually the first one up, on account of the fact that she took morning runs around the ship everyday before she got in a Viper.

Sure enough, looking at the clock told her that she had overslept. By a lot. "Frak," she muttered as she jumped up out of bed.

"Morning, Lieutenant," one of the other pilots told her.

"Why in the hell didn't someone wake me up?" she asked. He shrugged.

"I thought you were on mid-shift."

Kara just rolled her eyes as she headed for the bathroom. It was far too late for her to get a run in; she'd be lucky to make it down to the hangar deck in time for the morning briefing by the CAG.

Usually after her morning run, her ration of cold water in the shower was good for cooling her down. Without that run, though, a shower was a lot closer to a torture device. Kara shivered as she stepped under the spray, trying to get it over with as quickly as possible. Sitting in her Viper for a few hours while on CAP wouldn't help, either – space was a very, very cold place. Her flight suit would only keep in the heat that she had started with.

_I would trade just about anything for a warm morning on a Geminon beach_, she thought to herself as she got dressed. _Well, if Geminon still has any beaches left…_ She didn't let her mind wander too far down that path. It wouldn't lead to anything productive.

She was on autopilot as she got dressed. Off-duty clothes first, consisting of a pair of PT pants and standard double tank-tops, then her flight suit. She put her Viper wings on the lapel and stuck her dog tags inside her suit. She toweled her blonde hair one more time when she noticed a couple water drops on her shoulder. Running her fingers through the slightly damp locks invoked her traditional hairstyle, and a quick glance in the mirror told her that she was presentable. She shut her locker door and headed for the deck, praying that oversleeping wasn't a sign of how the rest of her day was going to go.

* * *

By early that afternoon, it didn't seem like the Lords had been listening to her prayer. One of the engines cut out in her Viper as she came in to land, and she very nearly wound up as something that would have to be scraped off of the wall in the landing pod. She wasn't in a good mood when she got down to the hangar deck, and the Deck Chief wasn't happy either. His bird wasn't coming home in the same condition she'd left with it in.

"What did you do now, Lieutenant?" Tyrol demanded as she got the canopy open and her helmet off.

"I want to see your maintenance logs," she replied as she jumped out of the fighter and came down the ladder so fast her feet were barely touching the rungs, "Because I swear to the Gods, if I found out who frakked up on fixing that thing – "

"Nobody screwed up the repairs," Tyrol shot back. "Until you, I've never seen anyone go through so many engines so fast on a fighter."

"Gee, Chief, I wouldn't want you to get bored around here."

The two of them had a routine down by this point that could almost be considered comical. He'd start yelling at her for whatever damage had been done, and she'd yell back about whatever had been messed up from the instant she left the launch tube, and away the argument would go. They were both the type of people who didn't take shit from anyone, and it was always interesting when they went toe-to-toe.

"Well, Lieutenant," Tyrol countered, "Since you seem to think that you know your stuff better than my guys do, why don't you help out with the repairs?"

Therefore, an hour later, she was helping two of the crewmen try to remove her Viper's lower right engine. Tyrol still thought it might be salvageable, with some proper repairs. Since they hadn't gotten any more spare engines from the foundry ship yet, Kara had no choice but to go along with the Chief's plan if she wanted to be back in the air. So she was underneath the fighter, detaching the fuel and power lines with one of the deck hands while the other one disconnected the engine housing from the body.

"All right, I think I've got everything," she told them. "You ready to pull it?"

"Yes, Sir." They had the engine connected to a lift-trolley in the hangar's ceiling, so all they had to do was direct the lift backwards. Kara stayed in position so she could confirm that everything really was disengaged.

The sound of metal-on-metal was the only warning she got before one end of the engine suddenly came plummeting to the deck, only inches from her head. She'd been smart enough to make sure her body wasn't directly under the engine, just in case something happened, but she'd never actually expected anything to go wrong. Disconnecting a Viper engine was an involved task, but simply removing it was basic enough that there was no excuse for messing up.

It took her a moment to mentally recover from having the couple-ton engine almost land on her, but when she had, Kara was on her feet in an instant, backing the PO2 who had been in charge of the hook-up against the Viper. "If you've got no frakking clue what you're doing, Crewman, say so, because in case you hadn't noticed, we don't have any lives to spare around here due to idiotic, careless mistakes."

"Y-yes, Sir. I'm sorry, S-Sir," the guy was stuttering.

"Everybody all right?" Tyrol asked as he came over.

"I guess I really am going to need an engine replacement now, huh, Chief?" Kara asked. They all looked to the mass of twisted metal that was on the floor.

"Sorry, Sir," the crewman quietly told Tyrol. "I thought that I'd checked the connectors for the lift-trolley."

"You're supposed to check each other's work," he told both crewmen. "That's why you work together. Fighter parts are something else that we don't have enough of to waste."

"Yes, Sir."

"Yes, Sir," they echoed.

"We're supposed to be getting a shipment from the Hephaestus tomorrow," Tyrol informed Kara. "We'll have a new engine then."

"So my bird's out of commission for at least two days?"

"Yeah, Lieutenant. We'll find you another one for tomorrow."

"Great. Do me a favor: either train your men, or get them off the frakking deck. Enough of us are getting killed by the Cylons; we don't need our own people helping them out." She then stormed out of the hangar without waiting for him to reply.

* * *

Kara had never been a fan of the food in the mess hall, and she doubted that would change anytime soon. That evening, however, they were eating rations for dinner, and it looked even more disgusting than it normally did. So she decided to pass on eating, even though she could hear her stomach rumbling audibly.

On her way back out of the officer's mess, she ran into Colonel Tigh, who was the last person she wanted or needed to see.

"Lieutenant," he said, giving her a half-assed salute. She didn't feel the need to return it as she mumbled,

"Sir," and attempted to go around him, but he stepped in her way.

"You were just greeted by a superior officer, Lieutenant."

"Oh, forgive me, Sir," she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "I assumed we were both off-duty. I mean, Lords know the almighty XO wouldn't be drinking while on-shift." Tigh rubbed at his face; he hadn't been aware that it was that easy to tell he'd had a liquid dinner. But then again, Kara always did seem to have a knack for catching him.

"Watch it, Lieutenant," he warned. Whether she was right or not, he didn't like her talking to him like that.

"Or what? You'll write me up for insubordination? That would be new and different. How about you save us both some hassle and just get out of my way? I have had a helluva day, and really don't feel like getting into it with you now." Tigh grinned like a Cheshire cat, but moved aside. Kara didn't even care if he now thought that he'd finally won an argument with her. She just wanted to get back to her rack and sleep away her horrible day.

* * *

Kara had been blissfully asleep for a couple hours when she felt someone shaking her shoulder. As her eyes cracked open, she momentarily wondered how this pilot had gotten stuck with the 'short straw' and left to awaken her. The Junior Lieutenant stepped back as soon as he saw her start to stir – a couple of her other bunkmates had wound up accidentally getting hit when they tried to wake her up in the middle of the night.

"What the frak do you want?" Kara asked him, not even bothering to sit up.

"Sorry, Sir. There was an announcement on the PA. You're supposed to report to the Commander's office."

"What time is it?"

"2200 hours." She sighed. It was late, considering she was on early shift the next day, but not all that late. Perhaps Tigh had ratted on her. After the XO had decided not to press charges against her a few days earlier for punching him, Adama had made Kara promise that she'd try to be on her best behavior around the Colonel. She already knew that her encounter with him that evening was not her best behavior.

She pulled on a light jacket over top of her off-duty clothes and put her shoes back on. The ship was still pretty active as she walked through its decks, offering salutes to the officers she passed. Adama's hatch was closed as she approached, so she knocked on it.

"Come in," she could hear him call, and so opened the door. The office lights were dim, but she could tell he wasn't alone. It took a moment for her to realize that the other person in the Commander's office was Lee Adama. Which was quite surprising. She knew that her friend been making more of an effort towards his father since she'd confessed the truth about Zak, but the Adama men were still rarely in the same room with each other for more than thirty seconds if it wasn't work-related.

"What's going on?" Kara asked as she joined them. Lee turned to face her, and her eyes widened when she realized what he was holding. On the plate in his hand was a slice of berry pie, something Kara hadn't seen since the world ended. And even more surprising was the little candle that was stuck into the treat.

"Happy Birthday," Lee told her. A quick mental count told her that it really was. _How did I lose track of the days so easy and so fast?_ she wondered.

"Where did you find that?" Kara asked, indicating the dessert.

"I've got connections," Adama told her with a smile that she couldn't help but return.

"I completely forgot," she admitted.

"That's what I figured," Lee said. "When we were at the Academy, you were usually reminding people a week ahead of time, but I haven't heard a word about it so far."

"Been a little preoccupied," she said, her voice quiet. Both men nodded. "So, you two actually pulled this off together?" Father and son exchanged small smiles.

"You'd be surprised what we can do when it comes to you," Adama told her.

"In any case," Lee said, giving her the dessert. "This is yours. And this," he pulled a stogie from his pocket. Kara laughed.

"Why, thank you."

"Are you going to make a wish?" Adama asked her, indicating the candle.

"Me and wishes are probably a dangerous combination," she replied with a laugh. Nevertheless, she indulged them, if only to see the smiles on their faces. Kara closed her eyes for a moment, sending a silent prayer to the Lords that they would all be kept safe. There wasn't much else to wish for these days, at least nothing else that really mattered in the grand scheme of things. A few weeks without Cylons were about all they could hope for.

In that moment, as she reopened her eyes, she was reminded of another birthday a few years older. She, Zak, and Lee had been at the Academy together, and they'd gone to a bar in the city to celebrate. Lee had pretty much been serving as the chaperone, making sure his brother and friend didn't get drunk enough to end up in the brig later, but all three had enjoyed themselves. A couple good bottles of ambrosia had been shared between them, as they all joked and laughed, telling stories and sharing hopes for the future. That future had been shattered now, and the one Kara was facing looked pretty bleak. But for now, she was with the two people in the universe that meant the most to her, and that was all she really needed.

She took the stogie Lee was offering her and Adama laughed when she used the candle to light it. She grinned widely before blowing the little flame out. "Well, let's get this party started," she told them.

* * *

After a couple hours of sitting around Adama's office, enjoying a few stogies and each other's company, Kara finally decided she really had to get back to her bunk. She would be getting up around 0500 hours in the morning, and needed some sleep. Lee walked back through the corridors with her.

"Hey, it's 0005 hours," he pointed out after noticing a clock. "Your birthday's officially over."

"Yeah, it looks like."

"So, did you have a good day?"

"Well..." A smile crossed her face. "It ended as a good day."

* * *

Fin.


End file.
